# How to teach psychology?

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/how-to-teach-psychology/5335>\
**Category:** CSG1997\
**Created:** [March 10, 1997, 5:49pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/how-to-teach-psychology/5335 "1997-03-10T17:49:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Human\_Factors\_Lab](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/b3f665/32.png) [@Human\_Factors\_Lab](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Human_Factors_Lab)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 1997, 5:49pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/how-to-teach-psychology/5335/1 "1997-03-10T17:49:04Z")

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[From Rick Marken (970310.1750)]

Dan Miller (970310)--

> This sounds like a great course, Rick.

Thank you. Thank you.

> Would you make the same decision [to leave academia] today?

I think so.

I did teach a couple of special courses on PCT when I was at Augsburg  
College. But I still had to teach the regular Psych courses as well:  
Intro, Research Methods, Statistics, Developmental, Learning,  
Sensation/Perception/Cognition, Social, etc etc. I certainly would not  
have been willing to teach all those courses from a PCT perspective,  
even if it could be done. It would not have been fair to the students,  
many of whom were hoping to go on to graduate school. You sure can't  
pass the GRE if you've only taken PCT psychology.

And I certainly couldn't have gone on dishing out the conventional  
wisdom in the courses I had to teach. When I did the research methods  
course, for example, I felt like an astrophysicist teaching a course in  
Sun signs;-)

So, yes. Given what I perceived (and still perceive) as the academic  
resonsibiliites of a professor of psychology, I would make the same  
decision now as I made then; I'd stop being a professor of psychology.

Best

Rick

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**Author:** ![T\_B\_Harms](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/ba9def/32.png) [@T\_B\_Harms](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/T_B_Harms)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 1997, 6:53pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/how-to-teach-psychology/5335/2 "1997-03-10T18:53:13Z")

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from Tracy Harms (970310.1350 PST)

Rick Marken (970310.1100)

I heartily agree with your recommendations for teaching psychology as  
informed by control-theory. My only disagreement arises here:

> And, finally, I would discuss what one might expect to see when independent  
> control systems interact in the same environment; this would be the "social  
> psychology" section of the course.

In contrast, I would from the beginning nurture an awareness of ecological  
interaction. By the time one gets around to the "social psychology"  
section the principle of feedback among control systems should be familiar.  
Not so familiar as the feedback within control systems, I suppose, but  
enough so that the distinctly \*social\* aspects of this area are seen as a  
special case of the more general pattern of ecological resolution.

Tracy Bruce Harms  
harms@hackvan.com

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**Author:** ![Richard\_Marken](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@Richard\_Marken](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Richard_Marken)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 1997, 7:15pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/how-to-teach-psychology/5335/3 "1997-03-10T19:15:24Z")

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[From Rick Marken (970310.1100)]

Lars Christian Smith (031097 12:30 CET) --

> You have often stated your skepticism towards conventional psychology.

Well, it's not really "skepticism". It's just that, given what I now  
understand about how control systems work I know that you can't find out  
much about them using conventional methodology.

> how would you actually teach an introductory psychology course? How  
> would you organize the course? What would you include, other than PCT?

I would start by pointing out the ubiquity of the controlling done by living  
systems. I would present tons of evidence that organisms shape (control) the  
environment, rather than vice versa. I would point to achievemments as  
simple as walking and as skillful as writing fugues as evidence of  
control. I would have all kinds of simple demos to illustrate the nature of  
control (the ability to consistently produce preselected results in the face  
of inconsistency). I would spend a LOT of time showing the students what  
control IS, that it's all around them (and what they do) ALL the time, and  
that it is what distinguishes the behavior of living systems from that of  
non-living systems.

Once the phenomenon of control (purposeful behavior) is understood I would  
describe the nature of systems that control. This would be done in the  
context of simple control tasks (tracking tasks), but the appropriateness of  
these control tasks as a model of ALL controlling would be clear (or should  
be made clear) to the student at this point. In this section of the course  
the student should come to understand what "control of perception" means. I  
would also show that the perceptions that organisms control can be as  
"simple" as the position of a line or as complex as one's position on  
abortion. I would probably point out examples of the students' control of  
complex perceptions at this point.

Once the student understands the phenomenon and the model of control I would  
desribe how to study control; how to determine what living systems are  
controlling. I would use demos like the "coin game" to illustrate this  
methodology. I would also use some "real life" Tests of control;  
conversational approaches to determine what is controlled, etc. To the extent  
possible I would try to find studies in the "conventional" literature which  
are either suggestive of POSSIBLE controlled variables (such as the  
ethological studies Gary mentioned) or that actually are tests for controlled  
variables (like the baseball catching article in Science). The idea would  
be to help the student learn how to GUESS (based on observation of overt  
behavior) what variables an organisms MIGHT be controlling and to suggest  
studies (based on their new understanding of the nature and theory of  
control) that would TEST these hypotheses.

I would then explain a bit about possible hierarchical relationships  
between control systems in individuals (using the "portable demonstrator",  
my spreadsheet model and some of the demos in my unpublished "Hierarchical  
behavior..." paper). I would then do a little section on learning and  
development of new control systems. I would probably rely heavily, here, on  
the work done by the Plooij's on chimp and infant develpment of control.

And, finally, I would discuss what one might expect to see when independent  
control systems interact in the same environment; this would be the "social  
psychology" section of the course.

As you can see, there would not be much in this class about the "classical"  
findings in psychology. I would use some ethological data but this would be  
included in order to illustrate what we DON'T yet know and what we WANT to  
know - not what we do know (since, as I noted in a previous post, the  
research to determine what we want to know -- controlled variables --  
hasn't been done yet).

I might also include some "classical" perceptual demos, but only to help  
students understand what perception IS; and why we need models of the  
perceptual process that converts what physics tells us is on our sensory  
surfaces into what we experience as the outside (and inside) world.

I left academia because I knew that, even if the College would allow me to  
teach an Intro to Psychology course like this (they would have), it would  
not have been fair to the students. So I've been teaching this course on the  
net for the last seven years instead;-)

Best

Rick

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**Author:** ![Dan\_Miller](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/53a042/32.png) [@Dan\_Miller](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Dan_Miller)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 1997, 7:56pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/how-to-teach-psychology/5335/4 "1997-03-10T19:56:46Z")

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[Dan Miller (970310)]

Rick Marken (970310):

This sounds like a great course, Rick. If I had taken it I might  
have become a psychology major, instead of sociology. This might  
have been true of others, as well.

> I left academia because I knew that, even if the College would allow me to  
> teach an Intro to Psychology course like this (they would have), it would  
> not have been fair to the students. So I've been teaching this course on the  
> net for the last seven years instead;-)

This decision was made a number of years ago. Would you make the  
same decision today? I ask this, because I took an introduction to  
sociology course from a professor who had discarded conventional  
sociology (if he ever embraced it) for a brand amicable with  
perceptual control theory. There remains a strong elective affinity.  
Without young professors teaching undergraduate and graduate classes  
it is difficult for a scientific movement to be successful.

I'm making no accusations, but just wondering about your present  
thinking on this important topic.

Dan Miller

Dan Miller  
miller@riker.stjoe.udayton.edu

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**Author:** ![T\_B\_Harms](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/ba9def/32.png) [@T\_B\_Harms](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/T_B_Harms)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 1997, 1:13am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/how-to-teach-psychology/5335/5 "1997-03-11T01:13:57Z")

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from Tracy Harms (970310.1800 PST)

> [From Rick Marken (970310.1750)]  
> [...] You sure can't  
> pass the GRE if you've only taken PCT psychology.  
> [...]  
> So, yes. Given what I perceived (and still perceive) as the academic  
> resonsibiliites of a professor of psychology, I would make the same  
> decision now as I made then; I'd stop being a professor of psychology.

This reminds me of Alan B. Scrivener's humorous (or bitter?) comment that  
''today we call schools where more practical skills are taught "Junior  
Colleges," while all the really useless ideas are confined to  
"Universities."''

(The section where that quote occurs is reproduced below, taken from  
A Curriculum for Cybernetics and Systems Theory,  
URL [A Curriculum for Cybernetics and Systems Theory](http://www.well.com/user/abs/curriculum.html))

I don't personally agree with the entirety of these assertions by  
Scrivener, but I found them well worth reading.

Tracy

> **···**
>
> \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_  
> The blind spot in our civilization when it comes to wholeness and loops  
> goes back a long way. Plato said, in Georgics, that "Helmsmanship is  
> unassuming and modest and does not boast and does not behave as if it had  
> done something wonderful." This contempt for piloting fits in with the  
> general ancient Greek aversion to any linking truth-seeking with useful  
> activity. This meant the literate philosophers and the skilled workers  
> were kept apart. The Romans were by contrast ruthlessly practical, had  
> literate engineers (who could write down their skills and plans). They  
> conquered the known world with their "practicality," which had toxic  
> social, religious and ecological side effects. Christinanity swept the  
> Roman empire partially as an antidote to the Roman toxic pragmatism. The  
> dark ages were, in Europe, a period of avoidance of practical applications  
> of technology in favor of the search for religious grace. Our civilization  
> didn't deviate from this pattern until the 13th Century, when literate  
> monks were forced to garden, and dragged out a bunch of Roman engineering  
> books, rediscovering hydraulics and inventing the windmill. Similar  
> integrations of learning and labor helped bring about the Renaissance and  
> the Industrial Revolution. And yet today we call schools where more  
> practical skills are taught "Junior Colleges," while all the really useless  
> ideas are confined to "Universities." Greek logic was made symbolic by  
> nineteenth century academic George Boole, who -- like the Greeks --  
> prohibited loops in logic chains. But in this century electronic engineers  
> found that you can build logic gates physically, and you can hook them up  
> in loops, resulting in both digital memories and digital oscillators.  
> These humble engineers were "off the map" of Western civilization's  
> mathematics and philosophy. One of the simplest of these circuits was a  
> one-bit memory, which was named a "flip flop" -- indicating the lack of  
> academic tradition for the whole idea.
> 
> Our traditions cling to the idea that explanations can be built of short  
> causal chains: event A causes event B, which causes event C. Loops are  
> prohibited because they are hard to analyze, introducing non-linear terms  
> into the equations. Therefore our current scientific method has become a  
> form of pretend madness in which we deny that anything is connected to  
> anything else unless we can prove that it is. We use this method because  
> we can so much more easily start with assumed isolation and then prove the  
> connectedness of the components of a system than do the opposite. But our  
> simplifying assumption has become an article of faith, and this false faith  
> is aggravating the "externalities" of our society: pollution, crime,  
> alienation, illiteracy, the decay of our infrastructure, the decline of  
> our industry. All of these problems have been amplified by the success of  
> our technology in achieving narrowly defined goals. Cybernetics and  
> systems theory are part of the antidote to the toxic byproducts of our  
> short-sighted reductionism.
> 
> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Alan B. Scrivener

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**Author:** ![Bruce\_Gregory9](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/43a26b/32.png) [@Bruce\_Gregory9](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Bruce_Gregory9)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 1997, 2:14am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/how-to-teach-psychology/5335/6 "1997-03-11T02:14:27Z")

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[From Bruce Gregory (970310.2115)]

Rick Marken (970310.1750)]

> And I certainly couldn't have gone on dishing out the conventional  
> wisdom in the courses I had to teach. When I did the research methods  
> course, for example, I felt like an astrophysicist teaching a course in  
> Sun signs;-)

You mean I \_shouldn't\_ be teaching my course in Sun signs?

Bruce Gregory

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**Author:** ![Martin\_Taylor3](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Martin\_Taylor3](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Martin_Taylor3)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 1997, 5:31pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/how-to-teach-psychology/5335/7 "1997-03-11T17:31:52Z")

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[Martin Taylor 970311 12:20]

> Tracy Harms (970310.1350 PST)
> 
> ... I would from the beginning nurture an awareness of ecological  
> interaction. By the time one gets around to the "social psychology"  
> section the principle of feedback among control systems should be familiar.  
> Not so familiar as the feedback within control systems, I suppose, but  
> enough so that the distinctly \*social\* aspects of this area are seen as a  
> special case of the more general pattern of ecological resolution.

This makes sense to me, and it could be used both as a lead-in to the idea  
of "reorganization" and, having got that idea straight, it could be used  
to show how individual reorganization can lead to social conventions,  
language, economic activity, and so forth. Could be done in early high-  
school, I would think.

The ecological feedback web is a good observable example of the effect that  
the activity of one control system can have on the abilities of another to  
control. The same happens inside a body, but can rarely be seen (it can,  
perhaps, in pathologies). By pointing it out in the external ecological  
context, the interactions might lead to experiments involving The Test  
on individuals in social contexts, and thence to the (sorry, Rick) dryer  
and more boring, if more scientific, applications of The Test in conditions  
where measurement is more precise (tracking studies).

If you really understand PCT, the whole is a seamless web, both within and  
among control systems. In teaching, I would hazard a guess that the easiest  
place to start picking apart the web is a place that students can observe.  
One such place is inside themselves, but since each student is different,  
some may not "get it" as easily as others. In social-ecological action,  
everybody can look, and the teacher may perhaps be more able to determine  
why a student doesn't "get it" than when the problematic perception is  
of the relationships among the student's own control activities.

There's a nice side-effect as well, of having students who are sensitive  
to possible problems with apparently obvious environmental interventions.

Maybe nonsense, but it seems reasonable to me.

At this moment.

Martin

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**Author:** ![Richard\_Marken1](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Richard\_Marken1](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Richard_Marken1)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 1997, 5:35pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/how-to-teach-psychology/5335/8 "1997-03-11T17:35:03Z")

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[From Rick Marken (970311.0930)]

For Bruce Abbott (970307.1940 EST), when he returns from vacation:

Me:

> Bad choice. Gary NEVER annoys me:-)

Bruce:

> Well, that's about to change...In fact, Gary has already gone to  
> work. (See Gary Cziko 970308.2011 GMT.)

As you shall see, Gary has, indeed, successfully annoyed me. Its' nice  
to know, however, that he was put up to it. I'd hate to think that he  
actually believed that stuff about conventional methods giving us useful  
information about control;-)

I'm actually glad that you put Gary up to this because it gave me a nice  
idea for an improved version of the "Behavioral Illusion" java demo  
which I hope to have up on the net soon. Thanks.

Me:

> Norman Anderson was able to obtain measures of the open loop  
> perceptual function using his method (anaysis of variance)?  
> You crack me up, Bruce!

Bruce:

> Naw, it wasn't his use of ANOVA that impressed me. His techique  
> works perfectly well without it -- it's essentially graphical.

Anderson's technique is still done with people who are in a closed loop  
relationship with respect to the evoked meanings of their judgements, is  
it not? In Anderson's case, the subjects are in a closed loop with  
respect to their judgements of a match between perceptions of  
combinations of factorially varied "stimuli" and the real or imagined  
perceptions evoked by their overt (or imagined) judgement of these  
combinations. Therefore, a graph of the average overt judgement made to  
each stimulus does not represent the  
open-loop perceptual function relating stimulus to judgement --  
any more than it does in the case of magnitude estimates.

Hans Blom (970311e) --

> My main gripe with "the simplest form of PCT" is that it is based on  
> models as well...

So PCT is just a version of MCT? But now I am even more puzzled. As far  
as I can tell, MCT is the brand of control theory used by most  
psychologists today (if they use any brand of control theory at all).  
If MCT = PCT then why haven't the experts in MCT (like yourself)  
explained to these psychologists that control systems control  
perceptions, not outputs; that the only way to determine what  
perceptions are under control is by applying disturbances to  
hypothetical controlled variables and looking for lack of effect;  
that controlled perceptions can be as simple as the sensed tension  
in a muscle or as complex as a theory of economic behavior, etc etc?  
Why, in other words, haven't the experts in MCT worked to change the way  
scientific psychology is done?

Best

Rick